Strong quake shudders Athens; 30 dead, dozens missing

Published: Wednesday, September 08, 1999

ATHENS, Greece {AP} Rescue teams and stunned residents used everything from cranes to garden tools Tuesday to dig for those pinned under wreckage from the strongest earthquake to hit Athens in nearly a century a 10-second shudder that claimed at least 30 lives and left close to 100 missing.

The scenes of desperate searches and survivors too frightened to return indoors were sadly familiar: Last month's monstrous quake in neighboring Turkey had moved many Greeks to put aside their historical enmity with Turks and mobilize aid.

But some significant differences came to light in the shared disasters.

Decades of progressively stricter building codes in Greece allowed the Athens metropolis to ride out the 5.9-magnitude temblor with much less misery than western Turkey, where shoddy construction was blamed for near total destruction in some places after the 7.4-magnitude quake on Aug. 17.

"Damage like we saw in Turkey is difficult to occur here with the modern buildings we have," said Manolis Skordilis, head of the Thessaloniki Seismological Institute.

Most of the damage and casualties were concentrated in working-class and immigrant areas north of Athens where construction standards were apparently lower or builders used shortcuts, some officials suggested. More than 100 buildings collapsed, from multistory apartment houses to factories, and hundreds more were left with cracks or crumbled facades.

State television reported at least 30 people dead, including several children. Most of the victims were crushed; a few suffered fatal heart attacks.

The exact number of missing was unclear, but state media said about two dozen people were trapped in flattened apartment buildings. An estimated 40 workers were missing in a collapsed foam products factory north of Athens, and about a dozen employees were reported under the rubble of an appliance maker.

In central Athens, there was no apparent damage to ancient sites, including the Acropolis and the towering columns of the Temple of Zeus.